Behind Her Eyes(65)

I head towards David’s office, leaving as many lights off as possible. I’ve been here alone before, and in the dark on early winter mornings, but the building feels different tonight. Unwelcoming, as if I’ve woken it from sleep and it knows I should no longer be here.

The doctors rarely lock their offices – the cleaners need to get in, and there’s an air of middle-class complacency that hangs over the clinic; an old-school trust. Plus, on a more practical level, it’s not as if they have cabinets full of morphine to steal from, and as for information, most of the patients’ files are stored in passworded computer systems that only the doctors can access. If David has a file on Adele here though, it won’t be on the system. He won’t want it where any of the other practice partners could see it, even if they couldn’t access it. Questions would be raised, ethical ones if nothing else.

His door is indeed unlocked, and I flick on his desk light and start searching through the old filing cabinet in the corner, but it’s mainly filled with pamphlets from pharmaceutical companies and self-help guides to give out to patients. A lot of this crap must have been left over from Dr Cadigan. It’s all dry and bland. I take everything out and go through it, but there’s nothing hidden at the bottom of any of the drawers.

It’s been twenty minutes by the time I’ve got everything back in, hopefully in the right order, but my disappointment has made me more determined than ever to find what I’m looking for. I won’t have the nerve to come back again, but I also need to be home by one at the latest so that Laura doesn’t ask too many questions. I look around. Where else can it be? He must at least have notes somewhere – he’s prescribing for her. He’d need something to cover himself.

His desk is the only place left to go in the uncluttered room, and I tackle it feverishly. The top drawer is notebooks, pens and stationery – surprisingly untidy given how spotless his home is – and then I yank at the larger bottom drawer. It’s locked. I try it again, but nothing gives. One locked drawer. Secrets.

I search the top drawer for the key, but it’s not there. He must keep it with him. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. What can I do? I stare for a long moment, and then my curiosity overwhelms me. I have to get inside. Screw the consequences. He might know someone’s broken into it, but he won’t know for sure it was me. I get a knife from the kitchen and jam it into the small gap at the drawer edge, trying to get some leverage to force it open. At first I don’t think I’m going to manage it, and then with a spat out mutter of, ‘Come on, you fucker’, I give one big shove and the wood splinters. The drawer slides open an inch. I’ve done it.

The first things I see are the brandy bottles. Two; one half empty. I should be shocked, or at least surprised, but I’m not. David’s drinking is perhaps the least well-kept of his secrets, from me and Adele anyway. There are also multiple packs of extra strong mints. How much does he drink in the day? I can almost picture him – a sip here, a sip there, not too much but just enough. Why does he drink? Guilt? Unhappiness? Who cares, I decide. I’m not here for him.

I’m tempted to go and empty the bottles down the sink, but I don’t, instead just taking them out and rummaging underneath. I’m on my knees and sweating beneath the make-up I’ve had to put on for Laura’s benefit as I paw through envelopes and folders of receipts and copies of medical articles he’s written.

Finally, right at the bottom, I see a large Manila envelope. Inside is a buff A4 folder. It’s lost that firm crisp newness, now soft to the touch, and the various pages inside are held together with treasury tags, a random collection of sheets of notes, not like a proper medical file at all. It’s what I’m looking for though. Her name is there, right on the front, in thick black marker. Adele Rutherford-Campbell/Martin.

I sit in his chair and run my fingers over the surface for a moment, before turning to the first page. It’s not a conventional medical file, that’s for certain, more a collection of random notes. Scratched-out scribbles in his poor doctor’s handwriting on various types of paper – seemingly whatever he had at hand at the time. I’d thought that whatever I found would go back a year or so, from whenever he’d started hatching this plan. Maybe when he met Marianne from the cafe in Blackheath, a thought that still stings my pride. But no, the first entry is from six years ago and it talks about things going back a decade. He’s infuriating in his lack of detail.

I pull the chair closer to the desk so the file can sit directly under the soft yellow glow of the desk light while I try to make some sense of his scribbles.

A minor breakdown three months after leaving Westlands during which time she had an abortion.

What was it Adele had said? At the start of their marriage he wanted kids and she didn’t. How would her choosing to have an abortion have made him feel? Must have hurt. The start of his resentment maybe? I flick through, further forward.

Suspicions of paranoia and extreme jealousy. She knows things she shouldn’t. Is she spying on me? How?

Now who sounds paranoid, David? is what I want to scribble under his jottings.

Adele claims incident at florist with Julia was not her fault, but too many similarities to the past? No action taken – no proof. Julia upset/afraid. Friendship over. Job over. Agreed no more work. Did she do it so she could stay at home?

The job Adele mentioned she once had. This must be it. But what happened? I think of the daily phone calls. Did David sabotage her work to make sure she stayed at home? But what was the incident? What actually happened? This file would never work to get her sectioned. There’s no detail and no official evaluations or sessions recorded. Maybe he’s relying on his reputation to be able to use this against her. A subtle damning of her rather than going big guns, so he can appear almost reluctant. I scan forward to the most recent entries, my eyes picking up on phrases that chill me.